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Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF)

organizationLast updated: January 21, 2019

Overview

Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF, “People Without Borders”) is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Roberto Corona, a Mexican-born activist dedicated to promoting the rights of illegal aliens in the United States. It is a sister group to two other Chicago-based entities, Centro Sin Fronteras (CSF) and its outgrowth, La Familia Latina Unida (LFLU, “The United Latin Family”). PSF and LFLU …

Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF, “People Without Borders”) is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Roberto Corona, a Mexican-born activist dedicated to promoting the rights of illegal aliens in the United States. It is a sister group to two other Chicago-based entities, Centro Sin Fronteras (CSF) and its outgrowth, La Familia Latina Unida (LFLU, “The United Latin Family”). PSF and LFLU once shared the same Chicago address (2176 West Division Street), which is also the address of the Adalberto Methodist Church wherein Elvira Arellano, the Mexican-born illegal alien who founded LFLU in 2001, hid from U.S. immigration authorities in 2006-07. A member of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, PSF currently has active committees in Tijuana, San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Describing itself as “a collective of friends” who stand “in permanent solidarity with displaced peoples,” PSF began leading caravans of migrants and refugees from Central America to the U.S. in 2008. The organization pledges not only to “provide humanitarian aid and legal advice” to such sojourners, but also to “build solidarity bridges among peoples and turn down border walls imposed by greed.” Its overriding objective is to “abolish borders” and facilitate the free, unregulated movement of Central American migrants into the United States.

PSF’s executive director is Emma Lozano, a left-wing activist who serves as co-pastor of the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, and as president and founder of Centro Sin Fronteras. Ms. Lozano’s late brother, the left-wing community organizer Rudy Lozano, was the father of the Communist Party USA / Young Communist League activist Pepe Lozano.

Additional key PSF personnel include Denis Omar Contreras, Rodrigo Abeja, Alex Mensing (an American who has helped organize a number of illegal-alien caravans), and Irineo Mujica (an Arizona-based activist who holds dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship and was arrested by Mexican officials for his involvement in a pro-illegal immigration protest in October 2018).

At the Lincoln United Methodist Church in 2014, PSF held a workshop that helped some 600 people apply or reapply for protection under President Barack Obama‘s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action of 2012, which shielded hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens (under age 31) from deportation.

On March 23, 2018, PSF publicized the aforementioned caravan by issuing a press release demanding that Mexico and the United States “respect our rights as refugees and our right to dignified work to be able to support our families”; “open the[ir] borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people of the countries where we are and/or travel”; and end all “deportations which destroy families.”

Ultimately, the PSF caravan disbanded in Mexico City and never reached the United States.

In mid-October 2018, PSF led a much larger caravan — composed of several thousand people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador — seeking illegal entry into the United States. This prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to warn the governments of those three countries that if they failed to disband this massive movement on their own soil, American foreign aid to both nations would be greatly diminished. In an October 21 press release signed by Irineo Mujica, PSF accused Trump and the United States of using “repressive tactics” to inflict “fear and racism” on the people of Central America. Moreover, the organization demanded that Mexico declare itself a “sanctuary country” with wide-open borders. Also signing the press release statement was former NBC Telemundo journalist Viridiana Vidal, who now served as the Nevada state director of America’s Voice and had openly declared her bitter opposition to “racists like Trump.”

As of late 2018, PSF consisted of approximately 40 activists hailing from the U.S. and Mexico.